In general, military and forces conduct target practice with personal firearms in order to develop marksmanship required in case of emergency, and to maintain combat skills. Such target practice using personal firearms is predominantly carried out indoors firing ranges or outdoors at zeroing firing ranges and actual distance shooting ranges. The bullet heads fired at such live firing ranges cause problems in that heavy metals contained in the bullet heads severely contaminate the surrounding environment and in that it is considerably difficult to dispose the bullet heads.
In particular, in the case of military forces, target practice using rifles such as M16 and K1 rifles is carried out at outdoor shooting ranges. At such military outdoor shooting ranges, since the ground or a hill is generally positioned behind targets, bullet heads fired from rifles are buried in the ground after passing through the targets. Consequently, military outdoor shooting ranges cause problems in that heavy metals contained in the bullet heads buried in the ground contaminate the surrounding soil and flow into nearby rivers, thereby contaminating the natural environment.
As solutions for solving the above problems, there is Korean Patent Registration No. 10-1087283, titled “bullet head-collecting apparatus”, which was granted to the present applicant on Nov. 21, 2011. The construction of this invention will now be described with reference to FIGS. 22 and 23.
As shown in FIGS. 22 and 23, the conventional bullet head-collecting apparatus 100 includes a bullet head-collecting unit 1 for absorbing the kinetic energy of bullet heads and a bullet head discharging unit 2 for discharging the bullet heads that drop from the bullet head-collecting unit 1.
The bullet head-collecting unit 1 includes a plurality of absorption panels 12, which are fitted in sliding grooves 111 formed in side plates 11, which face each other, so as to absorb the kinetic energy in the flight direction of the bullet heads, and an escaping blocking panel 13 coupled to the rear ends of the side plates 11 so as to prevent the bullet heads from escaping the bullet head-collecting apparatus.
The side plates 11 are erected from both side edges of the body C, which are installed on the ground in such a manner as to face each other. The inner surfaces of the two side plates 11, which face each other, have symmetrically formed therein a plurality of vertical sliding grooves 111.
The plurality of absorption panels 12 are fitted in the sliding grooves 111 from the front end of the body, from which direction bullet heads fired from rifles approach. In other words, the plurality of absorption panels 12, which are sequentially fitted in the plurality of sliding grooves 111, constitute a block layer through which bullet heads penetrate.
Since the adjacent sliding grooves 111 are spaced apart from each other by a predetermined distance, the plurality of absorption panels 12 fitted in the sliding grooves 111 are also spaced apart from each other.
The absorption panels 12 are made of a material capable of absorbing the kinetic energy of a bullet head while the bullet head penetrates the absorption panels 12. By way of example, metal plates may be layered one on the other, or synthetic resin may be charged between the metal plates.
However, the conventional technology has the following problems.
Generally, bullet heads may have various diameters, and the amount of firing charge for propelling a bullet head may vary depending on the kind of bullet head. Even in the case of bullets of the same kind, the amount of firing charge contained in the bullets may be slightly different from each other.
Since the conventional bullet head-collecting apparatus includes a plurality of absorption panels, which are integrally constructed as a single set irrespective of such differences in diameter and amount of firing charge, the conventional bullet head-collecting apparatus has problems in that it is impossible to properly control the extent to which the force of impact is absorbed in the field in accordance with the varying force of impact of bullet heads caused by differences in the diameter and amount of firing charge thereof.
Accordingly, since it is impossible to properly absorb the force of impact in accordance with the varying force of impact of bullet heads caused by differences in the diameter and amount of firing charge thereof, the application of the bullet head-collecting apparatus is inevitably limited.